Search This Blog

LIVING IN DOG AND BABY LAND

Last Sunday was my “interesting interaction
with the neighbors’” day. Or to put it
another way: “Have you freaking lost your mind you think you are so “entitled”
because you’re a 30’s something White person?” day. Both encounters happened to be with women,
and I say “happened” to be with since I’ve had similar experiences with male 30
somethings as well. More about that later.

A bit of background. This is my second tour living on Capitol
Hill; the first was back in the mid-1970’s.
Very different neighborhood back then than it is today. Suffice to say I decided to move away back in
1978 the day I chased a purse snatcher down the street in the pouring rain - he
outran me, not that I would have known what to do if I had caught up with him.
This defining incident occurred after my apartment was robbed twice and my car
booted twice for unpaid tickets. But
that’s another story.

Today with the city’s best weekend market,
Eastern Market, convenient METRO connections and small, two story, two bedroom
townhouses starting at $650,000, it’s a totally different place. In 2013 Capitol Hill is populated by young, White,
upwardly mobile couples for the most part.
I have to admit that I do enjoy living here – probably as a result of my
maturing years and not wanting to have to deal with neighborhood “strife” more
than anything else. And today we have a
Harris Teeter, Starbucks, “Yes” Organic Market and a slew of upscale retail outlets
and a couple dozen trendy restaurants.

It was my house-mate who asked me one day
(he jogs twice a day past a large park just two blocks away) why Americans – at
least those in DC - own so many dogs? “Status
candy” I told him, like the enormous baby carriages young couples use to
shepherd their infant to 4 year old youngsters to coffee shops and then take up
as much room as a pickup truck inside.
Admittedly, the dogs and babies are an integral part of the fabric of
Capitol Hill but overhearing some of the intimate conversations between dog
owners and their canine charges does make me wonder if the dogs are as much
psychoanalytical sounding boards as pets.
I won’t say a word about conversations overheard between Mummy and Daddy
and their progeny.

Back on point. Sunday is “trashcan putting out on the
sidewalk” day. For us, there is a 30
inch pathway next to our house that serves as access to our backyard (we have
no alley behind us) and serves the same purpose for the backyards of six townhouses
that front on 7th Street.
Every Sunday evening I can hear the rumblings of folks pushing their
green (trash) and blue (recyclables) wheeled plastic cans out to the sidewalk
on C Street.

I was cleaning up the front yard (for some
reason my house-mate cuts, trims and slashes plants, shrubs and trees leaving
the detritus in piles for me to dispose of.
I guess I should ask him about this.) and I was about to enter the
narrow path when I spied one of the 7th Street neighbors coming down
the pathway trailing a trashcan. It’s
way too narrow to allow two people to pass (frankly there’s about 2 inches on
each side of the trashcan) so I moved aside in order to let her through,
standing just next to the opening as it meets the 12 foot wide sidewalk. As she approached me, she stopped, looked up
at me standing politely to let her pass, and with her hand, motioned for me to
move aside. I assumed, through
interpreting this hand gesture, that where she wanted to place her trashcan was
to my right and, apparently, I was blocking her intended pathway to her
preferred spot next to the curb. Frankly
I doubt whether I misinterpreted her silent yet “pointed” signal. No, in fact, I think I “got” it perfectly.

I don’t know this women. She’s slim, toned
and has short cropped hair and I’ve only seen her once or twice since I’ve been
back from India; a 7th Street newcomer I suppose. Her action startled me. Here I had spied her coming down the path
with her trash can in tow, stopped what I was doing and stepped aside to allow
her unimpeded priority use of the narrow passageway. What I did was this: I had stepped into the pathway about 2 feet
when I saw her midway along the way (15 feet away), so I backed up, took two
steps to the West on the sidewalk and turned my body parallel to the path so
that I would in no way impede her progress.
She had a straight shot between the two fences right out to the public
sidewalk. And she wants me to move even
further away because I’m standing in her preferred route to the curb? What?
WTF?

Taking two steps around my body occupying
her intended route across the sidewalk just wasn’t in the offing? She couldn’t have just continued straight
ahead for 12 or 14 inches and then turned right rather than following the
diagonal path through ME to get where she wanted to place her trash can??? What
is this?

I mean this is not a big deal in life’s
scheme of things for sure. But I was
startled when it happened and not a word passed between us. She didn’t ask me to move – as if I needed to
– just this hand motion that demanded my acquiescence. It just struck me as the essence of arrogance
and entitlement. Or maybe it was just
plain rudeness. (I certainly hope she
isn’t a House staffer because that would more than explain her actions.) But whatever the reason, I can’t fathom the
thought process behind it; perhaps there was none which is even worse. She’s White; I’m White so it wasn’t a racial
thing. Now she is somewhere in her mid
30’s and I have 30 years on her so maybe it was an age thing. Or is she such a hard driving A-personality type
that she has no time to waste taking two additional steps in her life? Who knows? It’s a mystery to me.

In any event, it’s this attitude that I run
into occasionally that makes living on Capitol Hill less than perfect. Are people now so accustomed to
non-personal communication through Facebook and Twitter and texting that they
have lost the ability to interact with real human beings in a less than
mechanical fashion? Are we on the road
towards exclusive non-verbal interactions?
I’m at a loss to understand it and with not so many years left in my
life, I’m not going to worry about it. But
alas, so much for neighborliness. By the
way, I did not move for her. She had to
take those two extra steps.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I had a sudden revelation the other day while perusing the
veggie section of our local Whole Foods Market:I own not a single pair of “skinny
jeans.”How, you might ask, did I
suddenly stumble across this personal truth and profound revelation?Well, while fingering the “organic” bananas that always seem to be too green to me and comparing them to the
“regular, old fashioned, cheaper non-organic” ones, I noticed that I was in the
company of half a dozen young men all wearing skinny jeans and all examining organic
California oranges or the latest shipment of white asparagus – organic - also
from California.Now there was the
aspect that five out of the six young men (Millennials, I assumed) were very
easy on my eyes. On anyone's eyes if you want the truth. Some sported very chic short-trimmed beards, strong chiseled chins, sparkling eyes, ad worthy faces, and a couple who looked quite buff in their chest hugging checked lumberjack shirts …

PART ONE If you haven’t kept up with the right wing’s
latest attacks on liberals for protesting and resisting Trump then you probably
will disagree with me that I believe that we are heading for new wave of
violence against liberal demonstrators, protesters and resistors as well as against free speech and
the continued diminishment of basic civil and human rights right here in
America. We’ve seen such actions before
during the Civil Rights and Anti-Vietnam War days of the 1960’s.With our backs against the well, as they
surely are today, and the national atmosphere even more repressive with the
Trump Administration, you can depend on it. Why do I say what’s happening to us today
resembles what happened to African Americans during Jim Crow?In no way do I intend to portray the “plight”
of liberals and progressives today as analogous to the post Civil War situation
of African Americans following the passage of the 13th
Amen…

CAN WHITE MEN COMPETE IN THE DICK SIZE COMPETITION?ADVISORY: I write this
piece in a spirit of newsworthiness and fun.It contains language that might be offensive to some.But, if you are among the half of American
voters who supported Trump, then you’ll be accustomed to “Tellin’ It Like It
Is,” “Straight, Non-PC Language” “And Pussy Grabbing” as popular news items.
Okay, so the average size of White men’s cocks as opposed to
the average size of Black men’s cocks, may not seem like some vital issue
America needs to resolve immediately.But if you think that the question “Do Black Men Have Bigger Cocks Then
White Men? “ is just a benign offshoot of the culture wars, for example, you
would be wrong.Among White American
males there is probably no single issue – income inequality, illegal
immigration and gun control notwithstanding – that is a more important issue
facing them (us) today.Now, of course,
this is not a topic that The Donald or The Bern addressed in their political
campaigns – …

One Baby Boomer who's sick and tired of being slammed for being a liberal. It's not a four letter word! In fact it's a 7 letter word! One small effort to restore humanity to America before it's too late, if it isn't already.